You hear it all the time. It’s one of those timeworn American maxims, like “all men are created equal” and “real men don’t cry” — and, often, just about as misleading.

I’ve been thinking about that saying as another college year draws near. As a college instructor, I take note of seasonal media stories offering parental advice to help offspring succeed at college.

A solid such tutorial ran recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Bye-Bye Birdies: Sending The Kids Away to College”. It bravely suggests that students often fail from acting irresponsible, lazy and immature — lessons unwittingly taught and endorsed by parents. How? Read the piece and find out. But the author underscores that parents often don’t think enough to realize the harm they’re doing.

And that’s why I keep thinking about “I want my kid to have it better than me” — or however you’ve said or heard it. If you’ve repeated that around your child, it might be bad advice. If you believe it yourself, it’s a potentially harmful expectation.

Don’t get me wrong. Parents, of course, should want their kids to succeed. But a problem can develop in what we mean by “better.”

In America, historically “better” has meant “more” — as in more money and more stuff. For many of our forebears of the Depression era — and with impoverished parents today — that made sense. If you have nothing, you want your kids to have at least something.

But the Depression was a long time ago. Still, “better for my kids” has been ingrained on our consciousness. Like bad habits, bad sayings are hard to shake. We’d like to think we’ve long rid ourselves of notions like “keeping up with the Joneses.” Maybe many of us have. But the “better for my kids” resounds like an American mantra.

That’s why headlines in recent times have bemoaned an impending lower standard of living for millennials — those individuals roughly defined as born in 1980 or after.

This spring, the Pew Research Center issued a report on widespread demographic changes, “The Next America.” In part, it lamented, “Today’s young also have the unhappy distinction of being the first generation in modern history to have a lower standard of living than their parents’ generation had at the same stage of the life cycle.”

Page 2 of 3 - This month, Fox News did a piece on challenges facing the millennials, wailing, “A staggering 76 percent of adult Americans — a record high — lacks confidence that their children’s generation will have a better life than they do.” As evidence, Fox — as echoed elsewhere, before and after — depicted a sad spectre of the dreaded “lower standard of living.”

But what does that mean? According to investopedia. com, “standard of living” can be defined by multiple factors but usually focuses on wealth, comfort and material goods and necessities. But “standard of living” is different from “quality of life”: the two can overlap, but the latter is far more subjective, including such concerns as fair pay, job mobility and health care. In other words, you don’t need a high standard of living to have a good quality of life.

So what?

As the previous studies state, America still values the expectation of a continued rise in standard of living. But is “better for my kids” always wise anymore? The middle class is awash in debt, with cars and houses way beyond a household’s means. We’re killing our futures — unless, of course, you envisioned a future of working ‘til the day you die.

Debt is especially brutal to millennials. A June survey by Wells Fargo showed 40 percent of millennials are “overwhelmed” by debt, double the figure for Baby Boomers. Nearly half of millennials spent at least half of their income on debt — the largest being credit cards, then mortgage debt, student-loan debt, auto debt and medical debt.

Why? Not to keep up with the Joneses, but to keep up with their parents.

And parental expectations might loom larger these days. With tuition skyrocketing, some parents are shelling out big bucks on their kids (an idea that often backfires, as shown in a 2013 study.) If that investment is substantial, a parent might expect a big bang for the buck — as in, a child’s post-graduate overindulgence in materialism.

Is that what we want? Our kids going to school so they can buy more stuff than we did?

Maybe it’s time to think of switching our mind set of “better” from “more” to “less.” Less can be really, really good: less debt, less greed, less overreaching, less pressure, less consumerism, less material-based self-worth.

As the kids go off to college, that’s a lesson worth sharing. But this one is up to parents.